


Gargoyle

by Reannyn



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Mild Smut, My First AO3 Post, My First Fanfic, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 05:28:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16469642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reannyn/pseuds/Reannyn
Summary: A brief glimpse of life shortly after the end of Carry On. Unsuccessful talking, successful kissing.





	Gargoyle

Baz

It’s pouring rain as I make my way back to Simon and Penny’s flat after class. I consider casting an “under my umbrella” to keep myself dry, but it would probably draw attention since everyone around me is soaked through, so I don’t. I’ll spell myself dry when I get there. And anyway, something about being in the rain feels good right now. Since graduating and moving to a city filled mostly with normals, I miss feeling magic around me. The sensation of being surrounded by something unpredictable that might be stronger than me, the possibility of being overwhelmed by it. Thunderstorms are the closest thing I’ve found in the normal world.

When I open the door, everything in me sinks. Simon is standing by the flat’s biggest window, forehead pressed against the glass, watching the rain. His wings are visible. The spell from this morning has worn off. And they’re not just visible, but extended out around him, starting to curl in at the edges as if they’re going to wrap him in a cocoon. He looks like a fucking gargoyle.

“Simon?”

He doesn’t turn, so I repeat myself.

“Mmmm?”

He turns toward me, wide-eyed and startled. He looks almost like a little boy, surrounded by his huge wings and I think for a second that he seems scared of the wings themselves. I quickly spell them hidden and cross the room to him, still dripping.

“Simon, are you okay? Have you been here all day?”

Lately, he doesn’t leave the apartment very much. He says he’s worried that the spell will wear off before he can get home. I don’t know if that’s what’s really keeping him inside. I never know with Snow. I’m not sure if he knows.

He looks up at me and I can see in his eyes what it used to look like when he was about to go off. When he was working up to a bluster and about to lose it. Before, when he still had his magic, that look would send everyone around him into a panic. No one ever knew what would happen when he finally exploded. Furniture could fly, fires could ignite, it was anybody’s guess.

Now, I see all of that chaos still, but it’s all contained inside Simon. It’s got nowhere to go. His eyes are panic shipwrecked in an ocean of sadness. It hurts to look at him right now. He looks away from me and I feel relieved, and then immediately guilty.

“I thought I’d go to class, but then .... I just couldn’t. I didn’t have ....” He trails off. 

“And then the wings started poking out.”

I bring him to me and smooth my hands along his back, so he feels that the wings are hidden again. I’m not sure he’s noticed that I spelled them. He leans into me, his head burrowing into my neck and his hands on my chest, almost clinging to me. I’ve just wrapped my arms around him when he breaks free and lurches suddenly toward the door.

“I should try to get to class now, before I miss the rest of it again.”

Before I can reach him, he’s got one shoe on and he's digging around for his coat in the closet.

“Snow, your last class started ten minutes ago. It’ll be almost over by the time you make it.”

He’s still, improbably, heading toward the door. Still with just the one shoe. And no bookbag, with his arm through only half of his jacket. And I think he’s trying not to cry.

“Snow, stop.”

He’s undoing the locks on the door.

“Simon!” 

I put one hand on the doorknob and my other hand on his shoulder, pressing him back so he’ll turn and look at me. He puts up no fight. He lets his back fall against the door and his head down to his chest.

“Simon, please.” 

I hold his chin in my hand and tip his face toward me. I kiss his cheek, his neck. I whisper in his ear all the things I’ve whispered before. That I know it’s hard but that it will get easier, that we will be okay, that he just needs some time. I whisper all the things I hope. And then I whisper that I love him, because that’s the only thing I actually know for certain.

I don’t know if he’s hearing the words, but he’s responding to the kissing, thank the Mages. My hair is still wet, I realize, and it’s dripping on him. I reach for my wand to spell myself dry, but he stops me.

“Don’t. I like it.”

My soaked shirt is clinging to me and his hands move from my shoulders over my chest and down to my stomach. Which is full of butterflies, even now. Then he’s untucking my shirt and his hands are on my bare skin. He’s so warm. I feel it spread through me wherever he touches.

“Simon?”

He looks up at me and instead of answering, he kisses me. Long and slow and full. His fingers are undoing the buttons of my shirt. I keep my lips on his while I shrug off my jacket. As my clothes are coming off, I position myself between him and the door. If he insists on going, I’ll let him, but I don’t want Snow to leave right now. I don’t think he even notices. He’s not that observant on a good day and this is definitely not a good day. And anyway, I seem to be successfully distracting him.

He’s onto my belt next and I try to catch his eyes. We’ve only done this a few times. Always in the dark, always slightly terrified and fumbling and never entirely ... successful. He doesn’t seem scared now. His eyes are calm but questioning when they look into mine.

“Do you want ... this?”

I roll my eyes and manage to sigh with only a touch of exasperation.

“Simon, I’ve wanted whatever you will let me have for eight years now. Yes, I want this. I want you.”

In case he needs convincing, I’m painfully hard and I gasp when his hands move down the front of my trousers. He’s undoing the belt clumsily with one hand and driving me mad fumbling around with the other hand. I kick off my shoes to help things along. Then suddenly my trousers are down and his hand is fully down my shorts.

“Crowley, Snow.”

I think I’m actually moaning. I’m definitely biting my lip. I’d rather be biting his.

He’s finding a rhythm now and I can’t think anymore. Everything from the past year, from even before that. The terrible things that have happened to me, to him, the things we’ve done to each other. My unending inner monologue of worry about him, about us. It’s all drowned out by what he’s doing to me with his hands, and the smell of his hair in my face and the warm smoothness of his skin.

His skin. I suddenly need more contact with his skin. I’m always aware of how I could hurt him. I’m not afraid of it the way I used to be, but it’s always there, in the dark parts of my mind. How good it would feel to drink him, how he would taste. Maybe like his magic, burning and sweetly smoky.

I make him stop for just a second so I can take a breath and also pull his shirt over his head. I end up facing the door with him behind me, and he’s reaching one hand around to keep stroking me while his bare chest presses against my back. His other hand is clasped over mine, bracing us against the door. I don’t know whose plan this was, but it’s a good one. I feel his hardness against my backside and my knees actually go weak. Such a cliché.

I want him closer somehow, though I’m not sure that’s physically possible. I reach behind us and pull him toward me as I rock my pelvis into his. He gasps. 

“Baz .... Baz .... Baz.” 

He’s moaning more urgently every time and I know I will hear him later tonight, in my dreams, quite possibly forever. I hope forever.

\-----------

Simon

Baz’s whole body shudders as he cries out my name and he drops his head back onto my shoulder. I think I see his fangs, but he turns his head away so I can’t see his face. I’m trying to turn him toward me, to bring him closer, but then he’s moving away from me, grabbing his wand and spelling us clean.

He’s reaching for his trousers and I grab his arm.

“Baz, stop. No magic right now. You said you wouldn’t.”

He reluctantly stops trying to find his clothes when I grab his hand and pull him toward the couch. If I didn’t know him better, I’d say he was embarrassed. But I don’t know what for. He’s standing there in nothing but boxer shorts, and I don’t even try to stop myself staring. He’s like a living statue of some Greek god. Just as pale and smooth and muscled, but with his black hair falling in his face and his sharp grey eyes that always seem halfway closed but somehow don’t miss anything, and the fire just beneath his surface, all the time. Whenever Baz enters the room, I swear that gravity shifts a little bit. I feel like I’m always falling toward him.

He finally meets my eyes and now he’s looking mischievous. He cocks an eyebrow at me.

“You still have your pants on, Snow. That doesn’t seem fair.”

Clearly he’s noticed the bulge in my jeans. I worry for a second that he’s going to make fun of me, but then he pulls me against him, the whole length of his body against the whole length of mine. I want to cry, it feels so good. He has one hand in the small of my back, pressing me to him, and the other hand is in my hair, clenched in my curls and gently pulling my head back so my face turns up to his. His fangs are gone now, if they were ever there.

I think that when we first started kissing, Baz thought I was better at it. Or at least he seemed to think that I knew what I was doing because he always let me take the lead. Maybe he thought that Agatha and I had marathon make-out sessions or something, but it was never really like that. And I never figured out what I was doing particularly, just the same basic kissing every time, occasionally with some tongue. I have no idea what Agatha thought. She might have been bored the whole time. Probably she was.

Baz, though, has been putting some energy into this. Into kissing. Into getting good at kissing. I don’t know if there’s a way to study kissing, or maybe even some kind of spell or if he’s just always the best at anything he decides to do. The thing about Baz and kissing is that he almost makes it a conversation. When I would kiss Agatha, I’m pretty sure I was saying the same thing over and over again. Probably something like, I don’t know what I’d do without you Agatha, please stay. Over and over.

Kissing Baz is not like that. I think of him in elocution class and how he always had the right words and knew exactly how to say them every time. That’s what kissing him is like. He can kiss in the softest possible way when I’m almost asleep and he doesn’t want to wake me. He can kiss in an overly dramatic and teasing way, which he sometimes uses when I’m annoyed at him. And he can kiss me another way when he knows that I cannot bear to be alone with my thoughts anymore, and I need him to pull my out of my mind. That’s how he kisses me now.

He presses his forehead to mine for a second and we both take a deep breath together. This is something the therapist taught me, and it was weird at first, but now I like it. I close my eyes and open my mouth and he’s right there, exactly when I want him, how I want him. He’s still cooler than me, and it’s grounding somehow. Everywhere we connect, it feels like a circuit is completed. I never thought I’d feel anything like that again, after I lost my magic and couldn’t share it with him any more. And it doesn’t feel that strong now, but it’s the same sensation to me. I wonder if that’s how it feels to him too. I’ll have to ask him.

But not now. Right now, both his hands are undoing my belt (which works better than only using one, I notice) and then my pants are down and Baz is pushing me back on the couch so he can get them, and my one shoe, off. I flop back and let him. It feels weird, laying here almost naked on the couch. We have never done anything like this in the living room. Normally I’d be afraid of Penny coming home, but she’s on a trip to see Micah and won’t be back for a few more days.

Having taken care of all the clothes but my underwear, Baz returns to kissing me. He didn’t even say anything about the dirty socks I’m wearing with the holes in the heels, which I’m sure he noticed. I’m laying flat on the couch and he’s kneeling beside me, working his way down my neck to my shoulders. One of his hands is clasping mine and keeping it pinned on the cushion just above my head. His other hand is tracing a line down my body that he follows with his mouth. I feel my stomach tighten and my breathing get shallower. His tongue is moving down my stomach and there are no words.

We haven’t actually gotten this far before. I don’t know if we’ve gone this slow because he was afraid of hurting me or I was afraid of how gay I might or might not be, but at this moment, none of it makes a difference. He’s not biting me and when he takes me in his mouth, it’s like nothing I’ve ever felt. Unsurprisingly, he knows what he’s doing there too, and even though it's probably a little dramatic, I put a pillow over my face because I don’t trust myself not to make noises that the neighbors would hear.

I think I feel him smile and after a few seconds, he reaches up and moves the pillow. But I can’t look at him like that, it’s too much. His hair spilling over my stomach. I close my eyes and arch my back into the sofa. I reach for one of his hands and it’s there. His other hand is near his mouth, making everything feel somehow even better.

“Baz!” 

I’m gasping now. Or groaning. Or both. I don’t even know. Suddenly I’m scared and I know I can’t do this much longer and I want him to know, but he pushes me back when I try to sit up and he squeezes my hand and I know it’s okay. When I cannot possibly be wound any tighter, when it almost hurts how he’s touching me, everything lets go. I’m not even sure what I sound like, but the neighbors can certainly hear me. I can’t make myself care.

I’m still holding his hand and I bring it to my mouth and all I can do is kiss it. I still have no words for any of this. But when he brings his face back up to mine, I know that he doesn’t mind, that he’s not asking me any questions right now. His eyes are clear and gray and warm and his fire is just a little closer to the surface.


End file.
